Comcast and the National Football League’s (NFL) decision to relegate a key playoff game to Peacock in January helped boost the streaming service’s customer base to 34 million, according to financial earnings released on Thursday.
The figure represented an increase of 3 million paid Peacock accounts during the quarter, largely tracking research firm Antenna’s analysis released earlier this year, which claimed around 2.8 million customers bought Peacock to watch the AFC Wild Card playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins.
Around 16 million concurrent devices streamed the game, a figure that included Peacock customers who paid for the service before the event.
Peacock also saw an uptick in subscribers after the streamer landed post-theatrical distribution rights to last summer’s blockbuster film “Oppenheimer,” executives affirmed this week, with the service logging 55 percent more paid subscribers compared to Q1 2023, executives affirmed.
Revenue from Peacock increased 54 percent on a year-over basis to $1.1 billion, helping to boost NBC Universal’s overall revenue to $6.4 billion. Losses related to Peacock clocked in at $639 million, though it marked an improvement from the $704 million reported against Peacock during the first three months of last year.
Comcast’s overall revenue grew 1.2 percent to $30.1 billion, up from the $29.7 billion logged during Q1 2023. Its adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) was flat at $9.4 billion, while its earnings per share grew to $1.04, beating Wall Street expectation by 6 cents.
Peacock aside, what else went right for Comcast in Q1? Despite losing 65,000 residential and enterprise broadband customers during Q1, broadband revenue increased nearly 4 percent to $6.591 billion. While broadband customers might be switching to fixed wireless services and other solutions, current broadband customers are taking advantage of Comcast’s deeply-discounted wireless phone bundles, with 289,000 new wireless lines added to Xfinity Mobile during Q1, bringing the total number of wireless lines to 6.9 million, the company said.
Comcast’s traditional cable TV segment continued to shed customers amid rising subscription prices, with Xfinity TV losing 487,000 subscribers during Q1, bringing the total number of Xfinity TV customers to just over 13.6 million. By comparison, Xfinity TV had 15.53 million customers during Q1 2023.
